I want to clarify. I think nerdy-cute dorky guys can be smokin in their own way, in fact, in real life I tend to go for the less conventional look in a guy.

Often times I picture the peripery characters in a book, while not exactly unattractive, just not attractive to me. For lack of a better word, normal. They can even be described as very handsome or beautiful in a book but I don't feel they are in that running film in my mind as I'm reading. It can be because of their personality or just the picture/feel that comes to me.

The same thing happened after I read one of my all time favorites The Secret by Julie Garwood. I pictured Iain's friend Brodick as a big hairy mountain man guy. I had to wait a year or so to finally read his book Ransom, and he looked very different, LOL, so very different.

There was another Nora Roberts where I had this issue, Ripley's book Heaven and Earth, which followed the first in the series, Dance on Air. I just had a picture in my head of, while not an unattractive woman physically, just something about her . . . she was kind of butch, I guess. It just didn't work for me.

It's hard to explain, I hope you kind of get what I'm saying. It's kinda crazy how I get wrapped up in these fictional characters.

For me, it's not that the hero has to be drop-dead gorgeous, it's just that I have to want them when I'm reading the novel. I've loved plenty of disfigured or less-than-attractive heroes; I would probably love a the 'nerdy' type if authors wrote them more. It's just with Ed, personally, I didn't get 'hero' vibes off him as a secondary character in Sacred Sins._________________"Excuse me," said an icy voice from the bed. "I'm frigging bleeding to death. Mathilda can go tip a pike." -- Derek Craven, Dreaming of You

There was another Nora Roberts where I had this issue, Ripley's book Heaven and Earth, which followed the first in the series, Dance on Air. I just had a picture in my head of, while not an unattractive woman physically, just something about her . . . she was kind of butch, I guess. It just didn't work for me.

It's hard to explain, I hope you kind of get what I'm saying. It's kinda crazy how I get wrapped up in these fictional characters.

Ah, Ripley! This is one character I just couldn't buy as a romantic heroine. I pictured a "scrappy" 12-year-old boy in coveralls and a backwards baseball cap taking a swing at her prospective suitor. I thought Nora was just kidding when Ripley was introduced in the first book, but nooooooo. Almost as bad is Aubrey in Chesapeake Blue -- thank God she wasn't the heroine._________________Diana